Image Schemas in Cognitive Linguistics Introductio
Image Schemas in Cognitive Linguistics Introductio
Image Schemas in Cognitive Linguistics Introductio
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Beate Hampe*
* I wish to thank Joe Grady for his very helpful comments on an earlier draft.
2 Beate Hampe
Though the two strands of embodiment research have so far not been
integrated in a unified theory of image schema, proponents of both
approaches to the embodiment hypothesis have also stressed that cognitive
models and schemas – including image schemas – can be seen both as
expressions of universal principles at work in individual cognition and as
properties of an underlying, “institutionalized” cultural “world view” (cf.,
e.g., Shore 1996; Palmer 1996). Consequently, a “naturalistic, biologically
informed approach to human cognition” does not necessarily preclude “the
recognition of the constitutive role in it of culture” (Sinha 2002: 273), for the
general constraints created by shared biology and basic environmental
dimensions leave enough room for “extensive cultural variation” (Lakoff and
Johnson 2002: 251). It is thus worth noting that some of the more intensely
debated cross-linguistic evidence, such as the Zapotec concept corresponding
to what is split up into ‘in’ and ‘under’ in languages like Danish and English
(Sinha and Jensen de López 2000), or the distinction between ‘tight’ and
‘loose’ fit made by the Korean verb system is revisited by various authors in
this edition – both of a “universalistic” and more “relativistic” orientation
(this volume: Dodge and Lakoff; Mandler; Kimmel; Zlatev; Beningfield et
al., Dewell).
In the following, I will very briefly remark on the five sections of this edition
in order to complement the separate chapter abstracts and cross-references
provided by the authors themselves with a general survey of the edition.
The chapters in PART 1 (ISSUES IN IMAGE SCHEMA THEORY) deal with
major theoretical issues concerning philosophical and linguistic significance
of (“primitive”) image schemas as “structures of perceiving and doing”
which “can be recruited to structure abstract concepts and to carry out infer-
ences about abstract domains” (Johnson, this volume). In particular, the
main issues discussed relate to the identification and resolution of
definitional inconsistencies (Grady, this volume), the relevance of neuro-
biological information to a truly cognitive approach to language and thought
(Dodge and Lakoff, this volume), as well as – from a more general meta-
theoretical perspective – to image-schema theory as an important part of the
experiential framework developed by Cognitive Semantics as a whole
(Clausner, this volume). A theme reverberating throughout the entire volume
(this volume: Gibbs; Kimmel) is set up by Mark Johnson’s concerns that
Introduction 7
man [1981] 1988; Lakoff 1987: 416-461; Geeraerts 1992; Dewell 1994;
Kreitzer 1997; Tyler and Evans 2001).
PART 4 (IMAGE SCHEMAS AND BEYOND) collects papers that expand or
even reject the notion of image schema as currently conceived, whereby it is
noteworthy that all authors in this section share a commitment to
“extended”, or “situated” embodiment (cf. Zlatev 1997; Sinha 2002).
Michael Kimmel’s contribution reviews a large range of evidence from
cognitive anthropology supporting “extended” notions of embodiment in
general and of image schema in particular. He suggests that image schema
theory has hitherto neglected the study of “situated” as well as “compound”
image schemas, both of which are tied to culture-specific, affect-laden
experience defined by body practices, artefact use and specific languages.
The remaining two chapters in PART IV (this volume: Zlatev; Beningfield et
al.) comment on image schema theory via comparisons with two alternative
conceptions, namely Jordan Zlatev’s “mimetic schema”, and Claude
Vandeloise’s notion of “Complex Primitive” (Beningfield et al., this
volume). Hopefully, these may help to sharpen the awareness and discussion
of a potential blind spot within image schema theory itself which might stem
from the “universalist bias” in the standard account (cf. Kimmel, this
volume) and which relates to the way in which specific languages force
universal preconceptual structures into culturally determined, consciously
accessible, public and conventional concepts.
The chapters in PART 5 (NEW CASE STUDIES ON IMAGE SCHEMAS),
finally, present four highly diverse and detailed case studies (this volume:
Dewell, Popova, Cienki, Oakley), all to some extent explorative, rather than
merely applicative, and all with theoretical implications that reach well
beyond their immediate subjects of investigation. Robert Dewell performs an
in-depth “informal phenomenological analysis” (Johnson, this volume) of
developmentally early CONTAINMENT patterns from which he concludes that
image schemas are highly dynamic conceptual patterns that exist only in the
multitude of their transformations. Yanna Popova’s case study on
synaesthetic adjective-noun combination in present-day British English
addresses the cross-modal character of image schemas from a new angle,
and especially deals with the role of non-visual perceptual information in
image schemas. Utilizing existing knowledge about the lower perceptual
modalities, touch and taste, and about the cross-modal mappings in verbal
synaesthesia, it aims to establish the perceptual origin of the SCALE schema
in the lower modalities, which are argued to contrast with higher ones, sound
and vision, in being inherently graded and normative. Alan Cienki’s chapter
Introduction 9
5. Resumé
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